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The line isn’t moving. Kate Pulaski shifts her weight back and forth between her heels and adjusts her bag. It’s Monday. She woke up at three a.m. and took two different shuttles to get here on time, and it doesn’t even matter. The registration desk is hopelessly backed up. We can send an oversized tin can hurtling through space faster than the speed of light, but don’t ask us to organize an event for more than fifty people, she thinks, laughing under her breath.
She’s been in Starfleet for fifteen years. She should be better at the hurry up and wait. And there is a certain comfort to it—a certain relief that comes with knowing she can temporarily turn off her brain, that all decisions have been made, will be made for her. Her mind drifts to the cell cultures in her sickbay, the journal article she should be drafting. To the plants she should have watered and the message she needs to write to her brother. She’s not thinking about, trying really hard not to think about, why she’s on Earth, at this conference. Not yet. Not here. And that’s easy enough.
People come and go. Two lieutenants, who, she gathers, have not seen each other for years, trade stories about their first deep space missions. One of them talks about a friend’s memorial service, then they discuss warp engine upgrades. Half an hour later, Kate is forcing herself to thank the ensign at the desk, collecting the electronic key to her temporary quarters, padds of agendas and working group topics, and hurrying down the corridor to the main auditorium at Starfleet Headquarters. Her quarters will have to wait.
*
“I don’t need to remind you of the seriousness of the threat we face,” the admiral intones during his opening remarks. And he does his best not to. After briefly addressing the near-total destruction of the fleet at Wolf 359, he moves on to practicalities: predicting Borg movements, decoding Borg transmissions, understanding assimilation logistics. All of the things they are here to wargame and study.
A woman stands and begins discussing administrative items. Working group locations are listed in the padd. Sessions begin in twenty minutes. Preliminary reports are due on Thursday morning. Turn off all electronic sensors and personal data recorders and physically disconnect their power sources for the duration of the week. Don’t bring them into sessions. Group chairs need to meet with her now. Everyone else is free to leave. Shelby, her name is Shelby, Kate remembers.
Kate pauses as the throng leaves the auditorium. Shelby is a small, quick, bright blur at the front of the room. But then, most people are at that distance.
*
“One shot or two?” the bartender asks.
“Two,” Kate says quickly, looking back at her table.
She hasn’t been inside the officers’ club at Headquarters in years. Never had a reason. Never really wanted to hear cocky pilots tell more tales of confrontations with violent alien species, of heroic captains and plotting admirals. Didn’t go to many promotion parties. But they’ve redecorated. And it’s nice. Kind of old-fashioned. Lots of wood mixed with relics from far-away planets.
Kate’s table is starting to thin out. The medical working group chair, a captain who specializes in internal medicine, leaves to adjust tomorrow’s agenda. Kate should go, but she likes this. Likes having nowhere to go and nothing to say. She wonders if the energy of these young medics and nurses is a palpable thing—she feels almost buoyed by it, like she can rest on it or inside of it. Can float on top of these stories of lives saved and missions salvaged and not feel the need to look down or up. Or maybe that’s just the gin talking.
“Doctor Pulaski?” a woman’s voice asks from behind her.
Kate turns. Shelby is still bright and quick, up close. But God, she’s young, almost painfully young. Kate stands and extends her hand. “Yes, Kate Pulaski. And you’re Lieutenant Commander Shelby, right?”
“Yes—Elizabeth. I read your preliminary report on triage procedures for ships disabled by the Borg and for attempted assimilation victims.”
Kate motions for Shelby to take the seat next to her, and she does. Shelby’s eyes seem to dance as she sets down a full glass of wine and regards Kate intently.
“Are you enjoying running all of this?” Kate asks, gesturing around the bar at all of the uniformed men and women here to figure out how to beat the Borg.
“Well, it’s a lot of work, doctor. But yes. As much as one can enjoy running these things,” Shelby says, laughing just a little bit too loudly.
Kate takes another sip of her gin. Shelby still seems to glow in the light of the bar, and she looks not unlike Kate—actually a lot like Kate, how Kate herself would look if she’d joined Starfleet as a teenager and passionately believed in the possibilities and promise of space exploration.
“I was on a medical relief ship. After the battle. There wasn’t much to do,” Kate says. “Of course, I understand that you were much more involved.”
“Yes,” Shelby says. She sounds almost relieved. “I was on the Enterprise. I’m surprised they haven’t sent any medical representatives here. Or other representatives, for that matter.”
“I’m sure you know they reported that they had a priority mission,” Kate says. “And sent all of their reports and medical data to Captain Wilson.” She pauses. “I suspect they may want to maintain a little distance, at this juncture. And that’s all right.”
“Is it? We have a war to fight.” Shelby leans forward. A single curl falls across her forehead.
The remainder of the medics and nurses clear away from the table, nodding their farewells. Kate looks back at Shelby’s young, bright face.
“How long have you been in?”
“About nine years,” Shelby says, straightening her comm badge.
“A fast burner, then?” Kate clears her throat, trying to get rid of the slightly lecherous tone she’s sure is creeping into her voice.
“You could say that, yes. I didn’t expect for it to go this fast.”
Kate considers this. It’s true, maybe more true than anything else. “I didn’t, either. And I had lived out…hmm…two other careers, two entirely different lives before this.”
“I like being busy. Can’t stand waiting around. Still seem to spend a lot of time doing that, though.” Shelby sighs. “Honestly, I didn’t expect to be here”—she gestures around the bar—“running all of this. I wasn’t a great cadet, wasn’t sure how things would work out in the fleet. But I found that during a crisis or under fire, every drill I’d been trained to perform, every thought process I’d rehearsed, all of that—came to me like second nature, like there was another person inside me entirely, that could run it all almost without hesitation. If that makes sense.”
Kate could say something about how the trained brain reacts differently to stress than the untrained brain. About chemicals and hormones and neurons and the familiar versus the unfamiliar. She wonders if her Germanic ancestors, who were perhaps the first to appreciate and apply this concept, could imagine a conversation quite like this.
But mostly, she thinks about the aftermath of the battle. Of the exact amount of strength it took her to lift each body from its escape pod, of implants blooming on clammy skin, of the smell of burned skin, of eyes without sight rolling back and forth, of limbs separating from bodies, of the invisible lines she drew in her sickbay separating those who would live and those who would die, and those she and her medics would attend with the pressure of their hands and instruments that became increasingly useless. And how, yes, she knew each step and something almost separate from her body sang and glowed, even as the shift’s end found her panting on the toilet, trying to still something in her head and stomach that most resembled a storming ocean.
“Yes,” she says finally. “I’ve felt the same thing. It’s a combination of the training and adrenaline. I’ve reached a similar state during some exercises, also.”
Shelby pauses and regards her gently, then almost impishly. “I’ve been wondering, doctor. If over time I’ll become nothing but this mindless, battle-drill-executing shell of an officer. Like a drone,” she drawls, turning up a corner of her mouth, eyes sparkling at her own joke.
It is at this moment that Kate Pulaski decides that in some alternate universe she must be so dizzy with love for the creature in front of her that she’s given up everything she once held to be true about medicine and Starfleet and how a normal life should proceed, just for a prayer of making her believe something could work out between them.
She watches Shelby’s fingers tighten around her glass. Watches her eyes close as she drinks deeply. Talk it out, they say. Don’t self-medicate, they say. And yet you will, Kate thinks, even if you know better, you always will. Because inside that world the drink makes, there is no waiting—for the next crisis, or the next shuttle to the next conference—there is no separation of the time before and after the battle, there is no middle-aged woman warring with the ghost of a super-human officer drone. There are no voices at all. There is just the hard-won, grateful glowing present, and nothing to do, nothing that can’t wait.
Kate breathes deeply and finishes her gin. Right now, she’ll hold onto that feeling for as long as she can.
“Come on, Elizabeth,” she says. “Let me walk you home.”
*
On Friday, the medical working group turns in its finalized report. Topics presented include promising improvements to methods for reversing the assimilation process, revised procedures for triage on ships disabled by the Borg. A new mental health plan for the fleet is proposed. It focuses on encouraging those whose symptoms interfere with the performance of their duties to seek treatment, without judgment or adverse impact to their Starfleet career, as they would for any other illness. And Kate, for all of her doctor’s learning, can’t accept the idea that, after the Borg, waking up shaking in the middle of the night or jumping at loud noises isn’t a disease or disorder, but in fact a completely reasonable human response to completely unreasonable circumstances. She did her best to work that sensibility into the training materials she helped develop for the fleet.
Kate is sure that soon, some crewman who’s never glimpsed a Borg cube or even exchanged phaser fire with a Romulan warbird is going to snap and blow himself and his whole department out into space, and the newsvids are going to say it’s the Borg, it’s the Romulans, it’s what this violent world of space does to you. Who knows, where that comes from? Maybe fear is like a virus. Maybe she’s done everything she can here.
In the auditorium, the admiral thanks them for their work. Shelby is still a quick, bright blur at the front of the room. She wants Kate to read her thoughts on the bio-mechanical weaknesses of the Borg. Kate isn’t supposed to take life—but being a drone, really, what kind of life is that? She almost snorts aloud at herself. That’s a debate for another time, and she’s got a shuttle to catch.
She walks to the station. The line for the shuttle to Mars snakes almost out the door. Children cry and uniforms blur together and this, this is going to take awhile. She’s still no good at waiting.